ELAW Partner Yuri Melini receives Annual Front Line Award

Yuri Melini is a fighter. In Guatemala, he has worked for years shining a bright light on corruption. Government officials, drug traffickers, corporations – none are safe from Yuri’s relentless energy working to protect the rights of Guatemalan people from those who would steal or despoil their land or pollute the water children drink every day.

Yuri has the led the campaign to bring the assassins of environmental advocates Erwin Ochoa López and Julio Armando Vásquez (government workers for CONAP – Commission on Protected Areas) to justice. They were murdered in the line of duty – trying to defend protected areas on Guatemala’s Atlantic Coast. The week before Yuri was shot, he published an article in the Central American Diary calling attention to their deaths among the 128 attacks on environmental activists in Guatemala in recent years.

After the year that he has endured, I can’t think of anybody who deserves the Front Line Annual Award more. Congratulations Yuri!